Most Americans don’t know who the Koch brothers are, and yet they continue to be the focus of Democrats’ attacks.

Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found a full half of Americans didn’t recognize the names of Charles and David Koch. Another 20% have neutral feelings about them – leaving just 21% with negative feelings and 10% with positive opinions.

The unknown rating is the highest among political figures in the WSJ/NBC poll – four percentage points more than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and nearly twice as high as likely 2016 GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul (R., Ky.)

Two reasons: 1) Democratic donors certainly know all about the Kochs and their political spending, and 2) You have to have somebody to run against – and many Democrats believe the Kochs are as good a bogeyman as Mr. Reid will get. There’s no Mitt Romney and his Bain Capital connections this time around, but Democrats hope the Kochs provide a suitable stand-in for what they are billing as Republicans’ allegiance to big businesses and special interests.

Just this week the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released yet another attack on the Kochs, this time in the form of a Flipboard magazine detailing a series of stories and campaign videos that comprise what they are labeling “the GOP’s Koch addiction.”
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The Koch family-controlled Claude R. Lambe Foundation (CRLF), one of the routine sources of funding for right wing groups for more than thirty years has dissolved, further limiting what little is publicly known of which groups seeking to change Americans' rights receive money controlled or directed by Charles and David Koch and their operatives.

The foundation formally dissolved in 2013, according to documents filed with the IRS in February 2014 and obtained this month by CMD [Center for Media and Democracy].

Koch Industries magnate Charles Koch created the foundation in Wichita in the early 1980s with funds from the estate of his friend Claude Lambe. For the past three decades, CRLF has often spent millions annually to provide a regular infusion of cash for groups pushing the agenda favored by Koch. This includes millions of dollars, cumulatively, provided to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and some state-based think tanks operating under the State Policy Network (SPN) banner. Greenpeace has calculated that CRLF provided $24,643,414 to groups peddling climate change denial between 1997-2011.

CMD released a major report on SPN in 2013 which detailed the Koch funding of that network. "At least 13 SPN think tanks, not including SPN itself or SPN associate members, have received funding directly from the Koch-controlled foundations," the report noted. Much of this money was via the CRLF. This report is available here: The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government.

The political activities of the Koch brothers have been under growing scrutiny over the past few years. The millions of dollars in grants made via the Koch family-controlled foundations – such as CRLF – are subject to public disclosure under the IRS rules. Since little is known about which politically active groups the Kochs support through personal checks or through Koch Industries itself (as a closely held corporation) or its subsidiaries, IRS filings from their foundations have been the primary – if limited – window into which groups trying to change U.S. laws or affect U.S. elections they underwrite.

Just the Tip of a Very Large Iceberg

As CMD has documented, the Koch brothers have provided significant secret funding to right wing groups from their personal accounts and through corporate contributions. Details of this funding have only become widely known when documents from recipients revealing such funding enter the public domain. From one such document, CMD discovered that the Texas Public Policy Foundation received $159,834 directly from Koch Industries in 2010, more than double the $69,788.61 it received from CRLF that year.

Only the grant from CRLF was required to be disclosed. Without that document surfacing, the public would not know that even more Koch-family controlled money was secretly underwriting that "think tank" that was peddling controversial policies. The total amount of money that Koch Industries has used to underwrite such groups, including ALEC, is not fully known.

The National Journal also reported in September 2013 that David Koch himself had provided a $850,000 personal check to the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in 2003. Similarly, CMD reported that David Koch provided the Massachusetts SPN think tank Pioneer Institute, with a $125,000 personal check in 2007. Both of these documents were public, although unexpectedly so.

As seems likely, if the Koch brothers, both individually and through Koch Industries, are making similar grants elsewhere, then the size and scope of their influence has been significantly underestimated.The likely impact of CRLF's closing, even if what it demonstrates is just the tip of a very large iceberg, will be that the public knows even less about the Koch brothers' political spending. The foundation closed by transferring more than $2 million to an unspecified "donor-advised fund" within the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, to be distributed at the direction of whomever controls that donor-advised fund.
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...................................................................................................................................................................The end of Sarah PalinShe is purely an Obama-era novelty. As Obama's tenure ends, so does the career of Sarah Barracuda.
By Michael Brendan Dougherty, April 29, 2014

After this weekend, it's probably safe to say that Sarah Palin is done. Like Jesse Ventura or Ross Perot, she may show up every once in a while to hurl red meat or use stunt cameos to remind us a little of her awkward charms. But recent events seem to confirm that she is an Obama-era novelty politician — and not much else.

First she gave a speech to the NRA in which she joked that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists, offending people who otherwise make up her base. Next, Robert Costa reported on the ever-smaller crowds that have been greeting Palin in Iowa.

When Palin took the stage at the Hy-Vee Conference Center under a banner that read "Heels On, Gloves Off" on Sunday at an event for Senate candidate Joni Ernst, the ballroom was half-full, with a couple hundred attendees scattered in clumps. [Washington Post]

If the politically engaged seem bored with Obama, they have all but forgotten Sarah Barracuda, the manqué of anti-Obama populism. After years of halting appearances on Fox News, gaffes about Russia, and a parody by Tina Fey that nearly eclipsed the original, it may be hard to remember the whirlwind national introduction to Sarah Palin, which culminated in her galvanic speech to the Republican National Convention in 2008. Sarah Palin wasn't a joke back then — she was a live threat. In a few days, with the help of an ace stylist, an ace speechwriter, and sheer novelty, Sarah Palin almost transformed that election.

It later became a reason to knock Palin's vanity and ambition, but Lisa Kline's work as a stylist gave Palin a frontier glamor — that red leather jacket, the military-cut coats — that put starbursts in commentator's eyes. She was an idealized image of a hockey-mom governor from the endless Alaskan wild. Obama was new, but cool and aloof. Sarah seemed relatable and engaging.

Until the introduction of Sarah Palin, the 2008 election had been almost entirely framed as one of "change" vs. "experience." But speechwriter Matthew Scully must have discerned a kind of frontier populism in her accent, history, and politics, and wrote a convention speech that gave the election a completely different cast.

She slammed Obama for "saying one thing in Scranton and another in San Francisco," argued that he had written two memoirs but never authored a major piece of legislation, and asked what he would do "when those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot," a reference to the stage where Obama gave his acceptance speech last week. [CNN]

My personal favorite line was this: "The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery.'" You could almost hear that punch landing.

Palin gave what many in the Republican base had been craving all along. It was no longer McCain's long résumé against Obama's promise of change — it was a more primal election of "us" versus "them." She humblebragged, "I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment.... I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion."

And there on that convention stage we saw a preview of the "summer of rage" over Obama's health-care reform and the Tea Party rebellion of 2010.

For Republicans in 2008, alas, it became apparent that the McGovern presidential coalition had waxed in the past 40 years, while the Nixon coalition had waned. And for Palin, it's basically been all downhill since the convention: Saturday Night Live, a disaster interview with Katie Couric, an election loss, a boring reality television show, a number of her endorsed candidates flaming out, a clash with Roger Ailes, and one too many appearances on Fox News in which she seemed on populist autopilot or totally anodyne.

My theory is that Palin will have trouble finding a niche in the post-Obama world. She was the right minoritarian foil for the White House. The president is a brainy, cool-tempered, wonkish Hawaiian; he is a bit like the man from nowhere. Palin was slashing, heated, and defiantly Alaskan.

As his administration comes up more and more lame, what role will Palin play? Maybe none at all. The Obama-Palin dynamic may go down as a Pacific Ocean holiday from the Clinton-Bush rivalry that is the natural embodiment of our two-party, two-family American political system.
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The issue brought to light in the Donald Sterling matter is this: neither passing legislation nor even electing a black president can cleanse all minds of evil thoughts.

Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, is alleged to have made racist remarks about African-Americans. Considering Sterling’s past behavior, including paying $2.7 million in a housing discrimination suit, the allegations ring true.

His is said to be the voice in a tape, released by TMZ.com, in conversation with Sterling’s female friend named V. Stiviano. The male voice says it’s unwise to post messages and photos on social media about friendships with blacks. The male even goes so far as to berate Stiviano for bringing the NBA great Magic Johnson, a black who is part owner of the L.A. Lakers, to Clippers’ games.

The tale is complicated by the fact that Stiviano faces a lawsuit from Sterling’s family in which it is alleged that she embezzled nearly $2 million. Sterling has denied making the comments that were recorded, presumably by Stiviano, and given to TMZ.

But regardless of whether the NBA’s investigation confirms that the voice is Sterling’s, the fact is racism remains a serious problem in America. Blacks are the NBA’s dominant achievers, and a black man holds the highest office in the land, yet in a perverse and tragic way, such advances probably increase the level of ill-will among bigots.

If the voice on the recording is Sterling’s, and if it was recorded without his knowledge by Stiviano, then what we have is a crude, yet private, conversation. Under California law, similar to those in 11 other states, it is illegal to make recordings without the prior consent of all parties, unless the conversation occurs in public where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Stiviano could face a year in jail for such an offense.

Just as the TMZ story broke, I happened to be conducting a social experiment in Arizona for our “Candid Camera” program. A well-dressed British man and a modestly-dressed Mexican man each asked passersby for a favor. Almost everyone stopped to hear what the British guy needed. Some did stop for the Mexican — but many people wouldn’t even break stride, and a few detoured across the street to avoid direct contact.

No amount of legislation changes what lies in the heart. Many Americans — a shrinking universe, perhaps, but still a vast number — are frightened by social progress. Rather than accepting Latinos, or blacks, or Muslims, or gays, or anyone else who is trying to climb the social ladder, they become cowards. And they say things such as, “It bothers me that you want to broadcast that you are associating with black people,” which is a quote from the TMZ recording.

Magic Johnson said he feels sorry for his friends on the Clippers. Kobe Bryant said he wouldn’t play for a man like Donald Sterling. Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest player ever, said he was “sickened.”

Social media are ablaze with comments correctly condemning the remarks attributed to the Clippers’ owner. The Clippers players, while not able to say much publicly, staged a silent protest before Sunday’s game, wearing black socks and turning warm-up jerseys inside out to hide the team logo.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”Throughout sports, politics and the American landscape, sadly, that struggle continues.
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A duo of activists has quietly bested the energy lobby, helping ban fracking in 172 towns. Here's how they did it

By Lindsay Abrams, April 30, 2014

You probably haven’t heard of Helen Slottje, or, for that matter, of her husband, David. But in the past few years, the former corporate lawyers have become arguably two of the most powerful opponents of fracking in New York — not to mention the most successful. As the (sort of) public face of the duo’s efforts, Helen Slottje on Monday was honored with the Goldman Prize, the world’s largest environmental prize.

Like most fracktivists, the Slottjes became embroiled in the issue when they moved to an area targeted by drilling companies — in their case, upstate New York, which sits atop the gas-rich Marcellus Shale, and where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly put off making a decision about whether to lift the state’s five-year moratorium on hydraulic hydrofracking. Lacking confidence in the power of the picket sign or citizen engagement on oil-funded big government, they instead decided to approach the program at the most basic level. Their weapon of choice is a principle known as home rule: If individual communities decide that these industries pose a significant risk to common resources like air and water, then those communities can decide to keep those industries out, regardless of what state and federal laws say.

One by one, the Slottjes have helped small towns in New York enact such bans, to the point at which, even if New York’s moratorium were to be lifted tomorrow, the oil and gas industry would find itself effectively barred from drilling in 172 communities. After being decided in the towns’ favors at all of the state’s lower courts, two of those cases, in Dryden and Middlefield, are now up before the Court of Appeals. A decision, which will determine whether towns have the right to override state law, is expected this fall, and its anticipated impact can’t be overstated. As Thomas West, a lawyer for the energy company seeking to have the ban overturned, told the New York Times last year, “It’s going to decide the future of the oil and gas industry in the state of New York.” (The Slottjes, it should be noted, weren’t even mentioned in the piece.)

As for why you haven’t heard of the Slottjes? That, Helen told Salon, was entirely intentional — the due diligence of people who were making a powerful industry very, very angry. Up until the redesign hit several weeks ago, you couldn’t even find their names on their website. Winning the prize, which comes with $175,000 and an international spotlight, changes all that, putting them at potential risk. But, Helen said, it also presents the opportunity to teach their brand of gras-sroots legal activism to more communities, including those in other states. In that spirit, Helen ... stopped by Salon’s offices to open up about her personal story for one of the first times. Obviously, there was a lot to talk about ...

[MAJOR SNIPPAGE]

So are you going to keep working on a town-by-town basis, or do you have bigger plans in the works?

We started helping consult with lawyers and other groups in California, in Texas, across the country. The beauty of this was we could take it from one town to 180 towns in New York — we’d have to have it crafted for each state, and there are different rules, but this could happen across the country. Even in places where the laws aren’t necessarily as favorable to local control, it resonates with people. Who better to make decisions about what happens in our community? Should it be some business executive in Norway, or should it be the people who live in our town? Who gets to decide? In America, it’s supposed to be the people who get to decide. People feel disconnected from federal and state politics. You can get people involved at the local level. So we’d really like to try to spread that and get people involved in their local politics and use that as an entry point where you can begin to effect some change, despite the dysfunction at higher levels of government.

Are you worried about there being more industry blowback now that you’ve opened up about all this?

I’m sure that there is going to be. There are people who are going to be apoplectic. Local level industry people know who we are, and I’m sure this is going to cause them to be more upset. But we’re sort of at the point where we’re in front of the highest court in New York, the briefs have been filed, we’re confident that the court of appeals is going to do the right thing here. Even industry lawyers have said, they have to appeal — like, why wouldn’t you? — but they do not expect to win. We certainly don’t think they’re going to win either. So the personal attacks will not detract from the work.
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...................................................................................................................................................................Creating a Two-Speed Internet
By New York Times Editorial Board, April 24, 2014

Dividing traffic on the Internet into fast and slow lanes is exactly what the Federal Communications Commission would do with its proposed regulations, unveiled this week. And no amount of reassurances about keeping competition alive will change that fact.

Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the commission, is proposing that broadband providers — phone and cable companies — be allowed to charge fees for faster delivery of video and other data to consumers.

This would be a totally new approach to Internet service. It would essentially give broadband companies the right to create the digital equivalent of high-occupancy vehicle lanes for content providers, like Netflix and Amazon, wealthy enough to pay a toll.

In this new world, smaller content providers and start-ups that could not pay for preferential treatment might not be able to compete because their delivery speeds would be much slower. And consumers would have to pay more because any company that agrees to strike deals with phone and cable companies would undoubtedly pass on those costs to their users.

The F.C.C. proposal claims to protect competition by requiring that any deal between a broadband company and a content provider be “commercially reasonable.” But figuring out what is reasonable will be very difficult, and the commission will struggle to enforce that standard. The rules would also prohibit broadband companies from blocking content by, for example, making it impossible for users to access a service like Skype that competes with their own products.

If a majority of the five-member commission approves the proposal next month, it will be open to public comment before being finalized later this year. If adopted, this measure would be a huge victory for phone and cable companies that have consistently argued that services like Google, which owns YouTube, that transmit a lot of data should pay fees for the use of broadband networks.

But the viability of those networks are based on decades of public investments in the Internet, the companies’ use of public rights of way and, in the case of some companies, a long government-sanctioned monopoly over telephone service. Public interest groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Knowledge oppose the creation of two-tiered Internet service because it offers no public benefit, but would squelch innovation.

Officials at the F.C.C. said on Thursday that the proposed rule is the fastest way for the commission to respond to a January ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that struck down previous rules barring broadband companies from blocking content or engaging in “unjust and unreasonable discrimination.”

They argue that under the “commercially reasonable” standard, the agency will be able to review deals to make sure phone and cable companies do not abuse their market power (in most markets, there are only one or two service providers). But the proposal does not meaningfully prevent discrimination; it is largely a capitulation to the broadband industry.

The commission should move in a wholly different direction. It should decide to classify broadband as a telecommunications service, which would allow it to prohibit companies like Verizon and Comcast from engaging in unjust or unreasonable discrimination. (The F.C.C. classified broadband as a lightly regulated information service during the George W. Bush administration.)

Mr. Wheeler is seeking public comment on this option, but he is not in favor of it. Even though the appeals court has said the F.C.C. has authority to reclassify broadband, the agency has not done so because phone and cable companies, along with their mostly Republican supporters in Congress, strongly oppose it.

The Internet has been a boon to the economy and to free speech because it is not divided into tiers and is open to everybody in the same way.

In 2007, President Obama said one of the best things about the Internet “is that there is this incredible equality there” and charging “different rates to different websites” would destroy that principle. The proposal from Mr. Wheeler, an Obama appointee, would do just that.
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..................................................................................................................................................................."Ann Friedman, PLEASE. As you should know, the word 'women' is not an adjective. (Would you say 'MAN politicians'?) The appropriate word is 'female.'"-- APH, one of the commenters.
...................................................................................................................................................................Women Politicians and the Relatability Problem
By Ann Friedman, April 29, 2014

The next presidential race is all about women. Well, at least that’s the view from 2014. As Hillary Clinton knows all too well, a lot can change in the two years between the start of the presidential murmuring and the casting of actual ballots. Both parties are trying to woo millennial women. There’s been rampant speculation about how Chelsea's pregnancy will affect Hillary's chances. Reviews of Senator Elizabeth Warren's new book frame it as a pre-presidential “get to know me and my politics” autobiography.

The 2016 previews have been so X chromosome–heavy that the New York Times is wondering whether the Democrats will put forth a two-woman ticket. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. The party’s rising stars skew female, the Times points out, and the percentage of people who say they would vote for a woman for president has steadily risen. In 1937, only a third of Americans said they would. By 2012, some polls were returning 95 percent yeses. And for many voters, a more diverse group of candidates makes for a more interesting campaign. In a poll conducted by Emily’s List last year, 49 percent of voters said they would be “more engaged” in the 2016 election if a woman is on the ticket. If that’s the case, what sort of “engagement” might a two-woman ticket bring?

"I am not sure it’s wise,” Senator Dianne Feinstein told the Times. “You want a ticket that represents men and women.” This is a strange statement coming from a woman who is one half of California’s all-female Senate delegation. Feinstein was elected in 1992, the same year as Senator Barbara Boxer, in what was to be the first of many elections dubbed the Year of the Woman. If California voters were comfortable with Boxer and Feinstein representing them in the U.S. Senate 20 years ago — and have reelected them ever since — what makes her think American voters wouldn’t be okay with two women in the White House two years from now?

Feinstein’s reticence speaks to a deeper dynamic about gender and public life in America. Women are in the habit of accepting male candidates as the default and male perspectives as neutral rather than gendered. Women candidates can’t necessarily count on more support from women voters than from men, perhaps because women are used to getting past the question of whether candidates resemble us, and considering instead whether they’ll represent us.

Men — yes, even those who live and vote in the great state of California — have had far less practice. They’re used to being represented by … men. Their presidents have always been men. Congress is 81.5 percent male. The picture in state legislatures isn’t much better. (And this is all in contrast to much more equitable gender balances elsewhere in the world). Yet th it’s not just a problem in politics. Even though the majority of moviegoers are women, we get tons of movies with male protagonists because the overwhelmingly male filmmakers assume women will be able to empathize with all types of characters, whereas men will only relate to men. (This dynamic extends to race, too. It’s why the “black best friend” is a rom-com trope — Hollywood assumes that viewers won’t relate to a woman of color in the lead role.)

Social science says that the less privilege you have, the less obsessed with yourself you are. Because you’re not used to seeing your personal characteristics and issues highlighted in politics and pop culture, you’re forced to identify with others (usually people with more privilege and power than you have). You’re used to seeing people who don’t look like you and finding common ground. “Women everywhere tend to think and know more about men's lives than men do about women,” writes David Graeber in The Guardian, “just as black people know more about white people's, employees about employers', and the poor about the rich.” The only way around the relatability problem is to stop assuming men can only relate to male candidates, or that white people can only identify with white protagonists.

The truth is, relatability is an issue that every candidate has to grapple with, regardless of race or gender. Though the polling numbers on general acceptance of women in politics are encouraging, the “would you vote for a woman” question is a hypothetical — much like the discussions of a two-woman ticket. Things get much more complicated when you ask voters how they feel about a living, breathing, specific woman candidate, and especially two. Hillary, let’s not forget, was once considered a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Pundits and voters loved her until the narrative took hold that she was on top, and then the tide turned against her. If both the presidential and vice-presidential nominees are women, they won’t be two faceless female candidates. They’ll have their own complicated narratives to contend with — and sell to voters of all genders.

But, much like the feeling of Hillary’s inevitability before 2008, the dominant story right now is that women are on track to own 2016. The Emily’s List poll found that nearly 75 percent of voters — men and women — think the country will elect a woman president in two years. Sounds like they’re pretty confident they’ll be able to relate to her.
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I am trying to figure out if Sarah Palin will be a plus or a really bad minus for Republican U.S. Senate contender Joni Ernst. The other Republican candidates for the GOP nomination to take on Bruce Braley want to know that, too.

They are all fishing for endorsements, but it’s always a risk because you really don’t know going forward who will help and who will hurt. For example, the post-mortem suggests that Sen. John McCain might have done better if he had picked a less divisive and explosive running mate than Palin in 2008.

Although McCain initially got a boost from the visibility and excitement generated by his selection of the Alaska governor, in the end, Palin seems to have scared off independent voters and moderate Republicans who, while in a minority, must turn out to vote if Republicans are to win elections.

Even former Vice President Dick Cheney recently called McCain’s choice of Palin a “mistake.”

A study by my colleagues Roy Elis, D. Sunshine Hillygus and Norman Nie, writing in the journal Electoral Studies, concluded, “We estimate the ‘Palin effect,’ based on individual-level changes in favorability towards the vice-presidential nominee, and conclude that her campaign performance cost McCain just under 2 percent of the final vote share.”

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait cites three studies that show Palin was a net negative for McCain in the end, even though the Arizona senator would have lost the election even without Palin on the ticket. But, he says that studies of Palin as a vice presidential candidate suggest that, “Palin is probably the most politically damaging vice-presidential nominee in American history.”

Others disagree. Matthew Continetti, writing in the Washington Post, says Palin was not the reason McCain lost. “But Palin’s conservative record in Alaska and anti-abortion advocacy changed the Republican mood. With her by his side, McCain’s fundraising and support from conservatives improved.”

More to the point for current assessments of Palin as a political factor, others point out that her implosion happened after the election.

Matt Lewis argues in the Daily Caller that Palin was a positive for the McCain campaign, but he also notes, “I generally agree with their [analysts] conclusion regarding how Palin’s selection might impact the 2012 race.” Because of the backlash against Palin, Mitt Romney — someone not known for taking risks – was much more likely to make a safe pick. He also writes that “... perception is reality, and the perception — the retroactive perception — is that Palin was a net negative.”

For Joni Ernst, bringing Palin to Iowa adds to the visibility brought by Ernst’s “pig castration” ad that went viral. Palin is already a visibility-building and attention-getting move, with the media flocking to see and hear the former Alaska governor. It will no doubt help boost Ernst to the GOP nomination.

But in November, Palin and castrated hogs are probably not the answers to economic and global problems for which voters are looking for answers from their new senator. So Ernst will need to fill in the details of how she will “cut” big government and where those cuts will be made.
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An interesting series of articles from Commentary, the NYT and the Washington Post about the Republican party’s increasing demographic problem, and how it could preclude the Republicans from winning the White House for a long time coming.

In a nutshell, the GOP has a lock on angry old white men in the south and southwest, and they’re dying away, while minorities are having far more children than whites in those states, which could turn states like South Carolina, Arizona and even Texas blue.

Chris Cillizza at the Post walks us through some of the latest demographic data. He points to a new study from the Carsey Institute, showing where the trends are heading:

Using data from the 2012 census, the report showcases just how fast the minority population is growing among Americans younger than 20, even as growth in that same age group among whites is basically stagnant. The study’s authors write: “In 1990, 32 percent of the population younger than age 20 was minority, increasing to 39 percent in 2000. By July of 2012, 47 percent of the 82.5 million people under age 20 in America were from minority populations.”

The math isn’t complicated. Winning 27 percent of the Hispanic vote and 6 percent of the African American vote — as Romney did in 2012 — makes it hard to win a majority of the overall vote when those groups represent 10 percent and 13 percent of the electorate, respectively. If Hispanics increase to 20 percent of the electorate by 2024 or 2028, and the Republican presidential nominee’s performance is roughly equivalent to Romney’s 2012 showing, it will be impossible — or close to impossible — for that GOP nominee to win a national majority.

He points out that the “younger-than-20? minority populations live in Texas, Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina – reliably, for now, GOP states. If the Republicans lose those states, they may not win the presidency for a long time coming.

Interestingly, Nate Cohn in the NYT argues that the increasing polarization between white Republicans in the south and minority-loving Democrats everywhere else, might also make it hard for Democrats to govern as well:

The collapse of Democratic support among Southern whites threatens the party’s ability to control government and enact its agenda. Democrats will find it extremely hard to retake the House without reclaiming the majority white, Southern districts once held by the now vanquished group of Democrats known as the Blue Dogs. This November, Southern whites could easily deny Democrats control of the Senate by dismissing Democratic incumbents in North Carolina, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Cohn makes another interesting point: While the south is turning redder, it’s already red. Even if twice as many southerners hate Democrats than before, the GOP still gets the same number of electoral votes from those states. Cohn points out something I was about to add as well — defining the national Republican party by the south is asking for trouble. The rest of the country doesn’t think like the south, the rest of the country is liberalizing, moving forward culturally, and the south is not.

That also means GOP moderates will have a hard time winning the Republican presidential nomination since crazyland won’t vote for them. And the rest of the country, is less likely to vote a candidate who thinks banning gay marriage is more important than economic growth.

Former Bush official Peter Wehner, writing in Commentary, has the solution, and he’s wrong:

It’s an undeniable empirical truth that the GOP coalition is shrinking, and it’s shrinking in the aftermath of two fairly decisive defeats, with the latter coming against a president whose policies were judged by many Americans to have been failures. Which means the Republican task isn’t simply to nominate a candidate who can fire up the base; it is to find principled conservative leaders who can win over voters who are not now voting for the GOP at the presidential level. This requires putting forward a governing vision and agenda that is reform-minded and modernizing, that speaks to the purposes of government and not just its size, that aligns itself with the challenges of the 21st century, and that persuades Americans who are not traditional Republicans. [emphasis added]

The solution is not finding “conservative” anything. Wehner is repeating the old trope that got the GOP into trouble in the first place: that only conservatives are real Republicans. Wehner and the GOP are not going to find a “conservative leader” who is “reform-minded and modernizing.” The conservatives running the Republican party are from the south, and hold the same backwards Neanderthal views as their constituents. And while all that fire and brimstone malarkey may work in the south, it doesn’t work in the majority of the country.

So long as the Republican party defines itself as “conservative,” and so long as conservative means “crazy southerner,” the GOP will continue to be, and be perceived as, the party of grumpy old (white) men.
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...................................................................................................................................................................Health Care Politics In One Sentence
By Paul Krugman, April 28, 2014

The politics of Obamacare are clearly starting to shift. It’s not that the public is coming to love it — not yet, anyway. But it’s less and less of a bogeyman, with polls suggesting a majority of the public against flat-out repeal. So there’s increasing pressure on Republicans to lay out an alternative — and continuing surprise about their inability to articulate one.

But this is an example of why it sometimes helps, even in straight political reporting, to understand how policy works. Here’s the essential fact about health care policy, which in turn fundamentally shapes health care politics:

Obamacare looks the way it does because it has to.

Once again, for those who missed it: if you want to cover people with preexisting conditions, you must have community rating. If you want to have community rating without a death spiral — that is, if you want to keep an acceptable risk pool — you have to have an individual mandate. If you want to have an individual mandate, you have to have subsidies for lower-income Americans. And that’s Obamacare: a three-legged stool, with all three legs essential.

Republicans can’t offer an alternative because there isn’t one (aside, that is, from single-payer). Their plan, such as it was, was to wait for the plan to implode, so they would never be put on the spot; since that isn’t happening, Plan B is to bob and weave.
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Sarah Palin wants terrorists to know how the United States would deal with them if she were president.

Speaking Saturday at the National Rifle Association's "Stand And Fight" rally at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate accused the Obama administration of instating counterterrorism policies that "coddle adversaries."

"Come on. Enemies, who would utterly annihilate America, they who'd obviously have information on plots, to carry out Jihad. Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen," she said. "Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists."

Saturday's rally was part of the NRA's annual meeting, which drew thousands to Indianapolis.

During her speech, Palin focused on Second Amendment rights, which she said liberals are "attacking" in addition to the United States' "foundational values and tradition." According to Palin, creating gun-free zones in schools and other public buildings is "stupid on steroids."

"Maybe our kids could be defended against criminals on the spot if more Mama Grizzlies carried," she said. "And [the] Obama administration wants you ID'd for that? Well, then go ahead and carry a sign too. A sign that says 'Yeah, I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy.'"

While Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she hopes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes a run for the White House in 2016, she declined to explicitly endorse Clinton's candidacy today on "This Week."

"You know, all of the women - Democratic women, I should say, of the Senate - urged Hillary Clinton to run, and I hope she does," Warren responded when asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if Clinton was her candidate in 2016.

"Hillary is terrific," she said when asked again if she would endorse her in the event Clinton makes a run for the Democratic nomination.

Stephanopoulos also asked Warren about her past as a registered Republican in the 1990s and why she left the party.

"I was originally an independent. I was with the GOP for a while because I really thought that it was a party that was principled in its conservative approach to economics and to markets and I feel like the GOP party just left that," Warren said.

"They moved to a party that said, 'No, it's not about a level-playing field, it's now about a field that has gotten tilted,' and they really stood up for the big financial institutions when the big financial institutions are just hammering middle class American families. You know, I just feel like that's a party that moved way, way away," Warren said.
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Sunday, April 27, 2014

...................................................................................................................................................................Lies in politics? Of course. So?Aside from money, nothing is more integral to a political campaign than lies
By Jack Shafer, April 27, 2014

If you read closely, you can almost glean a laugh track from the transcripts (pdf) of the oral arguments presented to the Supreme Court on Tuesday in the political lying case, Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. The justices sprayed gentle ridicule and subtle sarcasm on Ohio State Solicitor Eric E. Murphy as he attempted to defend a state law that bans false statements during a political campaign.

Uniform enforcement of the Ohio law — and the dozen and a half other similar state laws — would reduce our political campaigns to what? Three or four months of observed silence before each Election Day?

Aside from money, nothing is more integral to a political campaign than lies. Campaigns lie about the other campaigns; they lie about their own positions, too. They lie about the consequences of the legislation and policies they propose. They lie in their speeches, they lie in their campaign literature, and they lie on TV, radio, on billboards, and over the Internet. Lies, integral as they are to campaigns, can’t be exterminated unless you snuff the campaigns themselves.

I rise to the defense of political lying not because I’m a liar. Well, I am a liar — but I’m so terrible at it that I limit my mendacity to stretching the truth only, making me a non-lying liar. My complete defense of political lying would, of course, fold in the criticisms expressed in Tuesday’s oral arguments, namely that such statutes suppress free speech and political speech during a political campaign. And who wants to trust a bunch of state bureaucrats to determine, during the heat of a campaign, which side is telling the truth?

My position is more basic and more principled than the one the justices seem to be carving out. In the American tradition, some campaigns seem almost completely composed of exaggerations, fabrications, and unbelievable promises and pledges.

Take for example, President Barack Obama’s statement, a cornerstone of his permanent political campaign, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” He or a top official have expressed this thought at least 37 times, and you don’t need a state of Ohio ruling to tell you it is not and was never true. It was a lie so monstrous, so expansive, and so consistently applied that I have nothing but admiration for the way Obama and his team sustained the lie before the professional fact-checkers dragged them to the turf and ate them alive.

Politicians lie for so many reasons that it’s hard to pin a single motivation on them. More difficult to mine than bitcoin, the truth remains a commodity too dear for politicians to spend on campaigns. Only in Aaron Sorkin’s cinematic fantasies does a candidate win by brushing every issue with the broad stroke of truth.

The truth is too often unpalatable to the electorate and too complex to express. Political campaigns are about telling the voters what they want to hear, not giving legal depositions, and about inducing voters into pulling the lever in a candidate’s direction. Show me a voter who believes political campaigns are about the truth and I’ll show you a 14-year-old who should be prosecuted for electoral fraud.

“Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings,” as Hannah Arendt put it four decades ago. Sometimes politicians lie because they think it expresses a higher truth (see the Obama example) or they come to believe their own lies, which would seem to apply to President Richard M. Nixon’s entire career. I know this sounds terrible, but as Arendt also pointed out, we should tolerate political lies because they serve as “substitutes for more violent means,” making them “relatively harmless tools in the arsenal of political action.”

If enforced routinely, state laws banning campaign lies would relocate the political process from the noisy and quarrelsome public sphere to court-sized rooms where “non-partisan” commissions and tribunals would attempt to sort out fair from unfair, legal from illegal, in everything from bumper stickers to buttons. As the justices noted in oral arguments, this has the potential to replace political campaigns with endless litigation, and move power from the electorate to the bureaucracy. As I said before, who exactly trusts bureaucrats — who got to where they are by being political — to referee these political fights?

After enduring two-plus centuries of political campaigns, American voters have largely normalized the lies issued by candidates and campaigns. Backstopping the public’s well-earned cynicism are those cynics in the press, who eagerly debunk the whoppers, large and small, produced by candidates and distributed on the hustings. I declare this the best of all possible worlds.

Only a military coup will prevent the Supreme Court from obliterating the Ohio law when it issues its decision before summer recess. But if the law endures, I’m sure campaigns will roll out their back-up plans to undermine it. They’ll tell more crafty lies. They’ll say things without actually saying them — “praeteritio,” as it is known among rhetoricians — and otherwise flex their imaginations to devise less easily-policed deceits.

The campaign hygiene authorities will regret the arms-spiral they encouraged and pine for the old days, when campaign dishonesty could be flushed from the bush and disarmed without using a big gun and expensive dog.Campaign lies I can live with. Campaign cops make me shudder.
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...................................................................................................................................................................Voices: In politics, it's the year of the woman
By Paul Singer, April 27, 2014

The 2014 battle for the Senate stars a number of female candidates in key races, and it is quite possible that the Senate will be the better off because of it.

This year, women are competing in some of the nation's most critical electoral matchups. Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina are two of the most endangered Democrats in the Senate. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire just saw her re-election bid transformed into a high-profile affair with the entry of former senator Scott Brown, R-Mass., into the race.

Republican Terri Lynn Land, the former Michigan secretary of State, is running neck and neck with Democratic Rep. Gary Peters for the right to replace retiring Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. If she wins, it would be a huge pickup for Republicans. Democrats have dispatched women to try to capture two red Senate seats: Michelle Nunn is the Democratic choice for an open Senate seat in Georgia, and Alison LunderganGrimes is challenging Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

And in West Virginia, Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller has decided to retire, creating a rare woman-vs.-woman Senate campaign, in which Republican Rep. Shelly Moore Capito is considered a heavy favorite against Democratic Secretary of State Natalie Tennant.

It has been well documented that American politics has become more and more polarized and partisan. But many of the contests listed above are races for a centrist electorate, and the female candidates are mostly running from the middle, not the fringes.

This pattern suggests that some of these women may strengthen a pragmatic woman-centered bloc that is emerging as a key force in passing major legislation in the Senate. The government shutdown last year featured men in leading roles: House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama unable to satisfy or subdue the vocal minority led by Sen. Ted Cruz.

In the end, a deal was brokered largely by Senate women, including Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Democrats Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray of Washington.

And female senators have taken the lead on other key measures. Landrieu was critical in passing legislation to fix the federal flood insurance program. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., won unanimous passage of a bill to make it easier to punish sexual assault in the military, after a prolonged debate with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who wanted an even tougher bill. Murray worked out a two-year budget deal with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that was at first deemed impossible.

And when the federal budget runs out again in September, it will be up to Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski of Maryland to make the deal with her House counterpart, Republican Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, to fund the government for another year.

This urge to legislate is partly a byproduct of the fact that many of these women represent purple states, where their constituents seem wary of hyper-partisan politics. But part of it also is that they have intentionally pursued personal relationships with one another, notes Debbie Walsh of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Through regular dinner meetings and other relationship-building efforts, Senate women have built friendships and established mutual respect, while male politicians frequently complain that such cross-party rapport no longer exists in Washington.

So we'll watch the 2014 elections to see which party controls the Senate. But which gender controls the Senate may matter more.
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Americans for Prosperity Nevada, the state affiliate of the Koch Brothers-backed group, appears to have hastily deleted social media posts expressing support for Cliven Bundy, the renegade rancher who exposed himself as a racist in recent press conferences.

A tweet sent by AFP Nevada on April 10 urging followers to read more about the #BundyBattle, which involves Bundy's refusal to pay fines for allowing his cattle to graze on public land, has been deleted. A Facebook graphic that the group posted criticizing the Bureau of Land Management for enforcing grazing laws against Bundy has similarly disappeared.

Previously, the page read: "The BLM spent HOW MUCH to round up cattle? ONE MILLION DOLLARS." As of Friday afternoon, it reads: "This content is currently unavailable"

AFP Nevada, a anti-government, libertarian organization, did not immediately return a request for comment. But the group is the latest to join the massive, frantic stampede of political organizations and media figures distancing themselves from Bundy in the wake of his comments. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) both condemned the rancher's remarks, and various Fox News personalities called them repugnant as well.
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...................................................................................................................................................................I'm in favor of anything that terrifies the right-wingers!
...................................................................................................................................................................From Amazon:Capital in the Twenty-First Century
By Thomas Piketty

"What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

"Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.

"A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today."
...................................................................................................................................................................The Piketty phenomenon
By David Brooks, April 27, 2014

[snipped]
And into this fray wanders Thomas Piketty. His book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” argues that the real driver of inequality is not primarily differences in human capital. It’s differences in financial capital. Inequality is not driven by young hip professionals who arm their kids with every advantage and get them into competitive colleges; it’s driven by hedge fund oligarchs.
[snipped]
...................................................................................................................................................................The Piketty panic
By Paul Krugman, April 27, 2014

“Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the new book by French economist Thomas Piketty, is a bona fide phenomenon. Other books on economics have been best-sellers, but Piketty’s contribution is serious, discourse-changing scholarship in a way most best-sellers aren’t. And conservatives are terrified.
[snipped]
...................................................................................................................................................................Welcome to the Piketty revolution: “Capital in the 21st Century” is a game-changer (even if you never read it)

"Capital in the 21st Century" is an unexpected bestseller that could actually change the world

By Sean McElwee, April 27, 2014
...................................................................................................................................................................Piketty's 'Capital': A Hit That Was, Wasn't, Then Was AgainHow the French tome has rocked the tiny Harvard University Press
By Marc Tracy, April 24, 2014
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Right-wing media have been rushing to distance themselves from the Nevada rancher they've spent weeks championing after Cliven Bundy revealed his racist worldview, but two of Bundy's biggest cheerleaders -- Sean Hannity and Fox News -- have vested corporate, financial, and political interests in the promotion of Cliven Bundy's anti-government land ownership agenda.

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy became Fox News' favorite folk hero after he refused to comply with court orders directing him to remove his trespassing cattle from public land. Hannity and many otherright-wing media rallied around Bundy and his armed supporters as they threatened violence against federal law enforcement officials attempting to impound Bundy's cattle and collect the $1 million he owes in fines and fees after decades of noncompliance with the law.

Bundy has said he doesn't recognize the existence of the federal government nor its authority over the land and has attacked the federal ownership of lands as subverting Nevada's "state sovereignty."

Hannity has promoted Bundy's anti-government rhetoric, arguing that the federal government owns far too much land and pushing Bundy's claim that not only does the federal government not have land-ownership authority but that they don't need or use the land they claim to own. On the April 23 edition of his show, Hannity attacked the government for owning too much land, agreeing with Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano that they do not have the constitutional authority to own any of the land. Throughout the land battle, Hannity continuously argued that the government is irresponsibly fighting for land they have no intendeduse for -- such as building hospitals, schools, or roads -- and should focus their efforts elsewhere to rapists, murderers, criminals, and pedophiles.

Bundy and Hannity's promotion of state ownership of federal lands gives airtime to an issue that conservatives have long been campaigning for but have had difficulty getting voters excited about -- an issue in line with the land interests of the Koch brothers. Slate reported on April 23 that the Fox News corporate, financial, and political interests being served by Hannity's promotion of Bundy lie in the network's connection to the Koch brothers:

Bundy's anti-federal agenda is closely aligned with that of Charles and David Koch, major Republican donors who have been pushing for states to gain control over federal lands - so they can be sold or leased to people like the Koch brothers in deals.

Fox News Network and Sean Hannity have a particular interest in the promotion and realization of such Koch interests because their funding depends on it-- Hannity receives major funding and large ad buys from Koch-affiliated Heritage and Tea Party Patriots.

Hannity's Koch-affiliated funders have a long history of promoting the privatization of public lands and condemning the federal ownership of land. Tea Party groups have supported local efforts to transfer federal lands. Heritage has advocated shrinking the U.S. government's control by selling its physical assets such as "huge swaths of land (especially out west)." Heritage was also a loyal promoter of the Federal Land Freedom Act of 2013, advocating for the transfer of federal land management to state regulators for energy resource development.

Giving airtime to an issue that is obscure but significant to his conservative funders makes perfect sense for Hannity. Politico reported that Heritage began sponsoring Hannity in 2008 and in 2013 Hannity began advertising for the Tea Party Patriots, "lending his name to fundraising drives, hosting its leaders on his radio and Fox News shows, and even using the Fox airwaves to promote the Tea Party Patriots website."

The Koch brothers have been covertly funding right-wing organizations such as Heritage Action and the Tea Party Patriots through the non-profit business league Freedom Partners whose tax code status as a trade association allows the organization to conceal its donors. Freedom Partners is one of the largest donors of conservative groups and its board has deep ties to the Koch brothers with many of its members being longtime employees of Koch Industries and the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

The Koch-funded Freedom Partners made grants of $236 million in 2011; among many conservative groups its recipients include Heritage as well as the Tea Party Patriots. Heritage Action received $500,000 in 2011 from the Koch brothers through Freedom Partners and additional funds from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. In 2012, the Tea Party Patriots received $200,000 from Freedom Partners.

The legislative efforts of such groups to transfer control of federal lands to states are "nothing more than corporate-backed messaging tools" initiated by conservative groups like the Koch-affiliates. Such efforts are rooted in the interests of the Kochs and other conservative groups to use the land in whichever way is most profitable to them such as mining, drilling, and other resource extraction.
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The influence industry sometimes produces strange bedfellows. Case in point, according to recently filed lobbying disclosure reports from 2014's first quarter: The same lobbying firm that represents Koch Companies Public Sector and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in their efforts to keep the IRS from tightening up regs on dark money groups also represents one of the biggest names in organized labor.

Of course, organized labor is not necessarily unfriendly to the idea of outside money groups; unions have made great use of super PACs and have been linked to liberal dark money groups like Patriot Majority. But the prevailing narrative of partisan politics puts unions on the opposite side of the battlefield from the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch (and by extension the conglomerate they own, KCPS).

Last week, the lobbying firm Siff & Associates filed disclosures indicating it was paid $50,000 by KCPS to lobby on H.R. 3547, specifically a provision to "prevent the IRS from using funds to target groups based on their political views, or spending public money " as well as a proposed IRS rule to add more oversight to dark money groups. The firm described this activity as lobbying for "General oversight of IRS efforts to curtail public education by 501(c)(4) entities on issues contrary to the positions of the Administration."

While KCPS did not return multiple requests for comment, representatives of the company have previously gone to great lengths to insist that the company's own lobbying expenditures are not reflective of the political interests of the Koch brothers. This case may be an exception: The Koch brothers are arguably the two most prominent enthusiasts of the 501(c)(4) dark money model. And given the level of vitriol aimed at them -- the brothers, their dark money groups and the company they own -- by prominent Democrats and groups like the union-linked Patriot Majority, it is surprising to see Siff & Associates' other first quarter clients.

Besides the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's affiliate, the Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, Siff & Associates had three union clients: the Sergeant's Benevolent Association of New York City, which represents 13,000 police sergeants (active and retired); the Federal Law Enforcement Officer's Association (which represents 25,000 federal cops) and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.

The Carpenters happens to be one of the largest unions -- second only to National Education Association in terms of political spending by unions so far this cycle -- and one of the most influential and well-connected in Democratic circles. The union's own super PAC affiliate, Working for Working Americans, has given $1 million this cycle to the Fund for Jobs, Growth and Security -- a super PAC run by a former aide of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) -- to support Democrats in New Jersey state elections. Working for Working Americans has also given $250,000 to Senate Majority PAC (the super PAC supporting Senate Democrats, also helmed by close associates of Reid) and House Majority PAC (which supports House Democrats).

In recent weeks, the Koch brothers have become a major talking point for Reid, who accuses them of corrupting the political system. But more than sending money to groups affiliated with prominent opponents of the Koch brothers, money from the Carpenter's union coffers has wound up directly opposite from money strongly suspected to have Koch ties. A $100,000 donation from Working for Working Americans wound up with WIN Minnesota, a super PAC backing Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who has been attacked by American Encore, a dark money group run by Shawn Noble, the architect of the sprawling dark money network in 2012 funded, at least partially by Koch money.

Chris Granberg, who represents all three of the unions for Siff & Associates, did not return requests for comment, nor did a Carpenter's union representative.

The Carpenters union spent $20,000 on lobbying in the first quarter, and spent $320,000 in all of 2013. KCPS, on the other hand, spent $10.4 million last year on lobbying.

One of Siff & Associates' other union clients -- the Sergeants' Benevolent Association -- lobbied on 501(c)(4) oversight, according to reports filed by the firm. The language is similar to what Siff used in the Koch filing -- albeit taking the tack that the legislation and oversight could hinder union political activity.
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If you think Congress is growing more polarized, you’re right, a University of Iowa educator said.

Cary Covington, UI associate professor of political science, hosted a public forum Thursday night at Old Brick called “Congress Divided…Really?!” The panel featured former U.S. Reps. Jim Leach and Greg Ganske, as well as two political consultants and the CEO of AKPD Message and Media, which spearheaded the Obama-Biden media campaigns.

“While polarization is a very pronounced trend today, it’s actually very common in our history,” Covington said.

Covington said increased polarization in Congress can be identified by three trends from the mid-19th century to today as party overlap disappears, the left and right move further from the middle, and the “emergence of a constant state of divided government,” in which the president and House and Senate are controlled by separate parties.

Although divided government was close to nonexistent in the United States before World War II, Covington said that since the Nixon election in 1968, divided government has become the norm.

Additionally, Covington said the polarization of Congress does not mirror ideological trends in the American electorate. According to a Gallup Poll tracking electorate identification from 1992 to 2014, the number of people who identify as moderate has gone down, while those who identify as independent have skyrocketed at an “unprecedented” rate, from about 20 percent to 42 percent.

“We the people are not politicizing ourselves the way members of Congress are,” he said.

Larry Grisolano, panelist, UI alumnus and CEO of AKPD Message and Media, said the number of voters moving away from the two-party system shows that representatives from both parties aren’t representing the will of the people.

“It’s fascinating, to me, when I see the contrast in the charts … between the way Congress is behaving and the attitude the voters hold,” he said. “It makes you wonder what in the world is going on with democracy.”

Grisolano said the division of Congress is partially because of a lack of steady representative turnover designed to occur in Congress, the changing landscape in information exchange, and the “dispersion” of the president’s power to deliver a majority message.

Jennifer Rossman, political consultant and former Senior Policy Advisor to Rick Santorum, said that to get anything done in the Senate, politicians must balance the three P’s: politics, policy and process.

Rossman said politics have “distorted” the other two, leading to a “breakdown in the regular order of process.”

Although bills still are being passed through Congress, such as the nationwide pharmaceutical “track and trace” system, recent newsmakers such as the fiscal cliffs, budget impasses and government shutdowns are occurring because of this breakdown, Rossman said.

“Polarization is really nothing new, especially in a two-party system, but in order to get things done it really does take leadership in order to get past that,” she said.
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...................................................................................................................................................................Our Private Religious Vs. Public Political BeliefsThere must be a distinction between what is private and public, for politics is not a religion.
By Richard Larsen, April 24, 2014

Last week, millions of Americans united in commemoration of the historical event of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. To Christians, this act marks the culmination of the life of one who came as the Lamb of God to fulfill the requirements of the Mosaic Law for the propitiation and expiation of mortal sin. To adherents of Christ and His teachings, such a belief is fundamental, and consequently, inviolable and sacrosanct. But regrettably, there are many who so believe, who project their private personal theology onto their public political beliefs with similarly unyielding intransigence. There must be a distinction between what is private and public, for politics is not a religion.

Religion is personal and private, and between a man and his God, even if one’s “god” is secular humanism. Those who are devout in their religion will not compromise or equivocate in those personal convictions; and frankly, they’d be hypocritical if they did. But what happens when such a personal religious conviction is projected into public politics?

Many of the principles of political ideologies have their roots in theological tenets; yet when they’re applied politically, they constitute a public application. For example, the left of the political spectrum is supportive of wealth redistribution, either as purely secular socialism or erroneously applying the biblical concept of “having all things in common.”

Similarly, many on the right believe in the classical-liberal precepts established by our founding documents as fundamentally religious in nature, based in life, liberty, and property (pursuit of happiness). We accept these as eternal verities, yet must be careful when it comes to applying them publicly in governance.

The tendency is to feel that since these tenets are fundamental, with man having being endowed by his Creator with those inalienable rights, that the codified application of those precepts is inviolable and not subject to compromise in application. For example, the absolute notion of individual liberty would preclude the qualifier that protects the rights of others. We have no more right to do everything we want under the guise of individual liberty than we do to impinge on the rights of others with no accountability.

Likewise, strict application of the principle of “life” would prohibit capital punishment. And even the concept of personal property is not absolute, since acquisition of property can be regulated so as to prevent appropriation by theft. So even though these are correct fundamental principles, their application is clearly negotiable (or up for compromise) as they are applied politically.

Even our country’s founding document that established the system of governance for the new republic based in those classical-liberal ideals was hammered out through compromise. Representation in the new federal government was compromised in such a way that the states had equal representation in the upper chamber, and the populace equally represented in the House.

The election process itself, for the two legislative chambers as well as the president, was the result of compromise. And without the compromise on slavery, there would have been no constitution (and, consequently, no United States of America.) The Constitutional Convention itself was a compromise, since many states wanted to merely revamp the Articles of Confederation rather than draft an entirely new constitution.

By all accounts, the Constitutional Convention was contentious and divided, with the disputation often based on deeply held convictions of the delegates. In what will stand as one of the greatest efforts of compromise in history, the new Constitution was ratified by nine of the thirteen colonies at the convention. State conventions at each of the colonies subsequently ratified the Constitution unanimously, even though several states initially rejected the document. By persuasion, reason, and education, every state ultimately voted in favor of the new system of governance.

In short, compromise resulted in the founding of America, even though the principles upon which it was founded were considered by many to be sacrosanct. Did the founders rationalize or diminish their convictions by compromising? Some may have felt so; yet the document that created our republic stands as the crown jewel in application of classical-liberal ideals to principles of governance. Clearly, then, principles and beliefs can be absolute, while application can be negotiable and subject to compromise.

In our private religious lives, we may hold fast to precepts we consider to be absolute and eternally true; yet by our actions, we often betray our convictions. Christians may profess ardently that they “love their fellow men”; yet are they not compromising on that private conviction whenever they act with malice, lack of civility, and vindictiveness toward their fellow man?

If we are to be uncompromising, it should be in our personal convictions (which we have control over) so that our outward acts do not betray our principled convictions. But in politics, although we may have convictions in absolute tenets, their public application to governance will always be even more imperfect since they apply publicly to all, not just on a personal and individual level. For it’s impossible to project our convictions onto the public realm and have them just as we want them. Definitionally, and a posteriori, they are subject to negotiation and compromise.

May we resolve to be more uncompromising in our private lives by our outward manifestation of our personal religious beliefs, and more compromising (as long as it’s incremental in the right direction) with our public political ideology. After all, politics is not a religion.
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It was a historic bit of cable-news thematic knitting: On his eponymous Fox News program last night, Sean Hannity last night managed to pull off a 10-minute segment comprehending Cliven Bundy’s racism, eminent domain, Benghazi and Jon Stewart.

Teeing up the segment was the news development on Thursday that Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher that Hannity has supported for weeks via numerous segments on “Hannity,” had said some racist remarks in the presence of New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney. Speaking of “Negroes,” Bundy proclaimed, ““They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?”

As we wrote in this space yesterday, those comments placed Hannity in a bind, considering that he’d used his program to popularize Bundy’s fight against the Bureau of Land Management over his tendency to allow his cattle to graze on public lands. According to the feds, Bundy owes about $1 million in grazing fees and penalties and the like. No stranger to outrage, Hannity deployed a little bit of it in responding to Bundy’s musings about the conditions of the “Negro”: “All right, allow me to make myself abundantly clear. I believe those comments are downright racist. They are repugnant. They are bigoted. And it’s beyond disturbing. I find those comments to be deplorable, and I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Cliven Bundy holds those views.”

A good start. The next logical move would have been to repudiate his own coverage of Bundy. But that was too far a walk for Hannity. Instead, he got into the hair-splitting business, attempting to keep alive the larger theme of his coverage, despite the unseemly comments about race from his ranching hero: “However, I also want to say this. The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy. At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control. Now, to me, this was about a federal agency’s dangerous response to a situation that could have resulted in a catastrophe, and that means people dying and people being shot, kind of comparable to what we saw in Waco, Texas.”

No, Hannity: You don’t get this Cliven-Bundy-a-la-carte option. Either you embrace Cliven Bundy in toto or you reject him.

Despite Hannity’s protestations, this is all about a man named Cliven Bundy. How many other Western ranching freeloaders are there who have stiffed the government for two decades with specious arguments and then rally with gun-toting protesters when the feds move in to round up his cattle?

Perhaps Hannity could be excused for embracing this guy, if only the signs of the rancher’s unhingedness had been shrouded before this latest encounter. They were not. All Hannity’s producers needed to do was check a certain document in the 1998 case United States of America v. Cliven Bundy. Here’s how it abridges Bundy’s stance in the case:

Bundy appears to argue in his Motion to Dismiss…that the Complaint…should be dismissed because this Court lacks jurisdiction since Article IV of the Constitution cannot be imposed upon him. Bundy claims that he is a citizen of Nevada and not a citizen of a territory of the United States, and he also quotes religious texts.

If you’re Fox News, that’s all the information you need to reach a simple conclusion: Perhaps this is a local story.

But no — Fox News, and Hannity in particular, herded this story into the national consciousness. To the point that the New York Times had to do a big takeout piece. To the point that CNN had to interview him following his racist remarks:VideoIn every Hannity scandalito, there’s an element of sheer hilarity, and in this case, it unfolds over several minutes in his monster segment last night about the Bundy story. From the Bundy story of mooching off federal land, Hannity accomplishes a high-wire elision into another issue altogether. Have a look at the transcript, the better to admire the dexterity with which he compacts two unrelated issues: “Before the mainstream media paid any attention to Cliven Bundy and his ranch, we on this program were focusing on similar issues, issues like eminent domain, for many, many years. Now, after all, these stories serve as proof that we have a government gone wild today in America!”

And from there, Hannity goes on a nostalgia tour, re-celebrating his program’s championing of people around the country who have fought off efforts by government to seize their properties via eminent domain. These cases involved land fights in California’s Central Valley; Riviera Beach, Fla.; and Louisiana. It bears asking what these cases have to do with Bundy, who, after all, did essentially the opposite of eminent domain by making public lands his own private grazing grounds.

One guess is that by going back to the eminent-domain highlight reel, Hannity managed to show that his advocacy in the past has stood up for African Americans fighting off government big-footing — just in case viewers might be inclined to associate the Fox News host with Bundy’s vile racism.At the very end of his Bundy segment, Hannity basically bundles everything else that’s wrong with the world into the context of Cliven Bundy.Addressing government overreach, he riffs:

Now, in recent years, we have seen it play out in a vindictive tax agency’s efforts to target and silence and intimidate citizens who happen to think this country is headed in the wrong direction. We watched tragically as our top diplomats and our commander-in-chief lied in the wake of a terrorist attack that took the lives of four brave Americans.

We’ve also endured the universal nightmare that is “Obamacare.” Premiums have, in fact, increased in spite of promises to the contrary. Plans have been canceled in spite of promises to the contrary. And now a federal agency is telling you what doctors you can and cannot see when you were promised the exact opposite.

In my opinion, Obamacare is the gold standard of government gone wild. But you won’t read the truth about the stories that I mentioned tonight in places like The New York Times. Why? Because that paper has actively helped cover up what really happened in the aftermath of Benghazi. Its reporters don’t have the time or the energy to stand with average Americans being victimized by eminent domain.

And by the way, the same goes for my good friend, funnyman Jon Stewart. He’s far too busy yukking it up on “The Daily Show” with his famous friends, and he simply lacks the moral courage to speak truth to power, even when he’s looking it right in the eye.

Cliven Bundy explains all of American politics.
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